MAIL COMMENT: Writing prudence out of the script

In every Budget of his ten remarkable years as chancellor, Gordon Brown proclaimed the message with such passionate conviction that even his critics couldn't help but be impressed.

No wonder there is a palpable sense of shock then, that as Prime Minister this pillar of economic sobriety seems so willing to kick up his heels, throw caution to the winds and start borrowing excessively.

Keeping up appearances, but Gordon Brown is U-turning on the golden rules he established as Chancellor

Keeping up appearances, but Gordon Brown is U-turning on the golden rules he established as Chancellor

However much the Treasury tries to play it down, his apparent readiness to rewrite his 'fiscal rules' amounts to the mother of all U-turns.

Just consider how Mr Brown earned his rock-ribbed reputation. Not only did he give the Bank of England freedom to set interest rates - a genuinely bold and imaginative move - but he laid down the rules that the Government should only borrow to invest and that total debt shouldn't be more than 40 per cent of national output.

So why is he now seemingly prepared to throw the 40 per cent rule out of the window and borrow his way out of trouble?

He must know that the news will fuel inflation and further undermine market confidence, to say nothing of what it will do to his hard-earned reputation for economic rectitude.

Yet the truth is that Mr Brown has little choice. With the dramatic slowdown in the economy, tax revenues have fallen off a cliff. Public sector borrowing hit £9.2billion last month, way above expectations.

At the same time, an increasingly bloated state - and under Labour there are 800,000 more on the public payroll - costs us more and more.

Even before this latest crisis, the Treasury estimated it would be in the red by £43billion next year. Now City analysts fear that the deficit in public finances will balloon to between £50-£60billion.

And that is Labour's real failure.

In ten years of uninterrupted growth, this Government had a golden opportunity not only to set money aside for a rainy day, but to undertake the improvements in our infrastructure - better roads, faster railways, new power stations - that would stand us in good stead when the hard times came.

Instead, we saved nothing. We poured billions into unreformed health and education services, but generally didn't achieve value for money. Transport is still a disgrace, energy policy a bad joke. Yet the state sector is now so vast that the Government employs more people than the population of Scotland.

No wonder the Treasury is struggling. But what can it do? Putting up taxes would be deeply unpalatable, because to do so now would depress our economy further and increase the chances of a full-blown recession. Indeed, in these tough times the same could be said of cutting state spending.

So embarrassing though it is, Mr Brown has to borrow. At least his U-turn will give him some breathing space.

But make no mistake. This can only be a stop-gap. The burden of an ever bigger state is squeezing the life out of the productive part of Britain's economy. Whoever wins the next election must meet this challenge.

Britain’s gain

With the failure of drugs cheat Dwain Chambers to overturn his lifetime ban, Britain may have lost its best chance of an Olympic sprint medal in the Beijing Games.

But if we preserve the integrity and self-respect of our athletics tradition, haven’t we gained something infinitely more precious?